The first mention of “push-button” in The Times is from March 9, 1887 on page 5. The title is “A New Telephone,” but upon reading it, what is this thing?

A NEW TELEPHONE
PARIS, March 8

I was invited to be present to-day at some telephone experiments between Paris and Brussels with a new apparatus known as the “micro-telephone push-button.” These experiments, which were made on behalf of the two telegraphic administrative departments of France and Belgium, produced a very lively impression on those present, and I believe the new apparatus to be the most perfect yet produced.

Is this type of an event a lost art? The inventor toils away in their laboratory, achieves some success, and invites a select group of colleagues to witness this success. Or is this event what we now call a “public beta”? Let’s invite all our colleagues to see this thing we have made.

As its name indicates, it has the form of an ordinary electric push-button.

This phrase stopped me cold. An “ordinary electric push-button.” First of all, calling it “ordinary” means that the device has been around for a while, people take it for granted, it’s just a part of everyday life. But this is 1887! What was an ordinary push-button in 1887? Notice also the name of this device: micro-telephone push-button. The noun, the essence, the identity of this device is a push-button. A button to us in 2008 is just a component of another product, which could be a radio, an alarm clock, or a telephone, but here the 1887 device itself is a “push-button.” A button on its own doesn’t do anything. It only acts as a trigger to make something else happen. But in 1887 this concept must have been so novel that the push-button itself became the identity of the device. Yet, it was also “ordinary.” Odd.

When the button has been pushed in, and has made a sound at the other extremity, it is taken out, and is found to be attached to a long electric wire. There is thus exposed the telephonic plate, which is extremely sensitive, so that where it is necessary to speak at short distances it is not necessary to come close to the instrument. For communications in the same street, or the same house, the operator places the upper part near himself, and without changing his position he can speak with the correspondent at the opposite extremity. He is not obliged to put his ear to the part which contains the button and brings back the reply. Thus for short distances those who make use of this apparatus speak in their ordinary tone, without changing their customary attitudes. They may sit or walk about, and speak just as if those they are addressing were present. When great distances intervene, as in the experiments performed to-day, in which the speakers and hearers were separated by 200 miles, it is necessary to come nearer to the apparatus, but without being obliged to speak quite close to it.

This isn’t quite a telephone. Sounds more like an intercom or walkie-talkie. Or, speakerphone.

Notice also: “without changing their customary attitudes,” an early shout-out to the notion that new technology is better when adapting or enhancing existing patterns of behavior, rather than forcing changes in behavior.

But what makes this apparatus the most successful of telephonic instruments is, that it can be made for half-a-crown, that is to say, for not more than the price of the ordinary push-button. Now, as it can be fitted to the electric wire of the ordinary ringing apparatus, it follows that it introduces a complete change in our ordinary modes of intercourse.

Lots of “ordinary”s. Oh, but now it’s about to change our ordinary modes of intercourse. I assume this refers to how we communicate with each other, rather than other forms of intercourse.

At front doors, in the interior rooms of houses, everywhere in short, where the ordinary electric buttons are used, the telephonic button may be introduced.

Sounds more like an intercom or speakerphone.

It will by this means be possible to give or receive instructions, to know who is knocking at the door, to communicate in short, by speaking as well as by ringing. On the advantage of this in everyday life it is unnecessary to dwell. The railway companies are making experiments with this apparatus as a means of communication between compartments of carriages. It is being fitted up on trial in hotels. I have seen it at work at the door of a private house, where I was replied to by those within without their having stirred from their places, and without the door being opened. Between Paris and Brussels, this instrument, costing half-a-crown, worked with admirable precision, and it was not altogether without an eerie feeling that I listened to a voice with a slight Belgian accent coming to me from a distance of more than 200 miles.

It’s incredible how many of our technological inventions are based on the human need to connect with each other, from the telephonic button down to Twitter. The forms change, the methods change, even the synchronous nature of conversation changes, but it all boils down to communication and connection.

On the advantage of this in everyday life it is unnecessary to dwell.

There are clearly only two options, blow hard or blow harder. Otherwise, just stop.

Of course, the usual method for designing an air speed control is a range from Low to High, communicated either with words or a graphic spectrum, plus Off. Also, “more” is typically clockwise to the right and “less” is ccw to the left.

But this control shows the danger when you try to use colloquial English terms for interface controls. Great theory, but proceed with caution.

On the second day, I spoke on the Language of Interaction, a topic that I’ve been evolving over the last three presentations. As usual, I tweaked the presentation up until the final morning, but overall I believe it went well. Talked for an hour and questions for 15 minutes. Dang that’s a long time. When the audio podcast becomes available, I’ll splice it together with the slides.

You can view the slides after the jump.

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Abstract

We are interaction designers during a time of rapid technological change, placing us in the incredible position of collectively creating and curating a new language, the language of interaction. The explosion of products with interfaces means that people have to continually adapt and learn new things. They will have to read each interface and look for clues, common visual elements that they’ve seen before. They’ll subconsciously look for a language that comprises words, sounds, colors, shapes, icons, motion, gestures, priorities, hierarchies and more. We are the custodians of this language, creating and curating it organically. We need to start seeing it everywhere and learn from each other as we define the future relationship between people and technology.

Presentation

Here is the presentation given at Interaction08 in Savannah.

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And here is the video. Hopefully you can advance the slides along with the video.

We make things for other people to use, but we can’t show them how.

Everyone in our industry, this amorphous world of experience design, in one way or another makes things for people to use. We make websites for people to access their bank accounts, book flights, read about the world, find a date, find a free couch, or publish their thoughts and emotions. We create products that they carry around in their pocket or bag so they can contact a friend or take a picture. We are in the business of making products for actual people.

Although we make things, grow attached to them and release them to the world, we can’t go home with them to instruct their new owners on how they should be used. We can’t point to that button right there, no, that one, to guide people through the interface. The product or device or website has to, on its own, communicate the instructions for how to use it. This is what we mean by intuitive: the instructions for use are so successfully embedded in the interface that little conscious analysis is required to begin using it immediately.

But how do people learn how to use the products we make? From where do they and we learn the design lexicon necessary to interpret an interface? From other products. The challenge is that people are learning from a lot of really bad examples. They’re surrounded by a lot of products that haven’t been thought through, skewing their view of technology. Bad ovens, ATM machines, alarm clocks, gas pumps, cell phones, websites. Every bad experience reinforces negative expectations of products. We have to see what people face every day so that we can make products easy to use and love.

Note: From here on, I’ll use the word product to mean any piece of technology with an interface. This can be a website, a car stereo, a washing machine, a cell phone application, a kids’ toy, a software application, a dialysis machine, a car stereo, and so on.

People learn how to use technology from other technology.

People are becoming more technically savvy. They’ve learned from experiences with other products which in turn creates expectations for how the next product will work. When this happens, their style of learning becomes different, more at the surface level than at the abstract level. They mature from what is this? to how does this one work?

For example, many people by now know how to use a MP3 player, abstractly. “Load the songs I want on it, find the artist or album that I want to hear, and play it.” That’s an abstract MP3 player. “Enter in my checking account number and password, then transfer money from this account to that account.” That’s online banking, abstractly. This means that learning a product is evolving into learning how to use this instance of a product. “Where are the tools for loading music? How do I use the controls to find and play songs? Where do I transfer?” We have to decode the interface in front of us. We have to read it to decode the embedded instructions.

When we figure out a new product, we look for familiar visual cues to guide us, elements that we have seen before in other products and have learned in the past. It’s very natural and normal: we learn from experience. Our brains are always looking for the patterns in what we see, trying to find the consistency, looking for the language. We subconsciously latch onto the most familiar interface elements and construct the instructions from there.

For example, consider a stacked list of words or short phrases. On a website, when we see a stack of words, especially when they’re on the left side of the screen, we assume them to be navigation. These words can have no ornamentation at all, and yet their layout and position alone can communicate navigation. Now think about the table of contents in a book, a layout device that was invented about 500 years ago. It’s a stack of words that navigates a book. We gravitated easily to website navigation because it looked familiar to something we’ve seen many times before.

For example, consider the colors green and red. They have become standard metaphors for good and bad, in software, on status lights, on EXIT signs, on street lights, throughout the world of interface design. In fact, their universality made it easier to use them in product interfaces. But these metaphors are just arbitrary. There’s nothing innate in red that means bad or green good, unless we trace their meaning all the way back to the pre-language logic of fire bad, tree pretty.

Another example, consider an equilateral triangle pointing to the right. We generally interpret this in interfaces as play or forward, depending on the context. In fact, these two notions have the same root, the play icon first indicating the direction the tape moved forward in reel-to-reel tape decks. Now, the play icon is a standard; it will be difficult for any other symbol to supersede it, especially when combined with the two vertical lines that mean pause. This ubiquity has advantages, allowing the start/stop metaphor of play/pause to migrate into other product types. Washing machines from companies like LG now use the play/pause icon. Even though it originally meant make the tape play, when someone encounters a right-pointing triangle and two vertical bars on a washing machine, without any accompanying labels, they immediately understand that it means start and stop, because they’ve learned that from other technology.

All language evolves. The language of interaction is no different. We interaction designers need to be aware of this, notice when it happens, and introduce innovations from other fields that evolves the language for the better.

We depend on the interface more as products multiply.

Complicating this challenge for people to learn new products is that new types of products are continually invented. We are still in the early years of a technology explosion where soon the possibilities will overwhelm us. The variety of inputs (keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, gesture, touch fabrics, other sensors) and outputs (big screen, little screen, projection, ink-based displays, digital paper, display fabrics) leads to endless combinations of potential product. The ease of incorporating interfaces into products will create a lot of great ideas, and a lot of bad ideas.

This future radically increases the dependence on the interface itself, the one common element among all products. In fact, as materials science produces more input options, the entire product will be interface. In such a rich productsphere, a common language of all the elements of an interface will be the only way to avoid sheer product overload. The interface becomes the bridge from one product to another. The key will be knowing how to interact with any product.
Furthermore, globalization will increase the diversity of people using the products we create. While English is currently the default language in interfaces, icons, colors and gestures have a better chance at becoming universal than words do. As interfaces go global, so must the elements that comprise them.

We create and curate the language of interaction.

Here’s the part I find most fascinating, looking at it from a long-term perspective. The rapid rise in the web, communications, software, etc. over the last ten years is changing into the greater language around us, incorporating the words and symbols that we use in interfaces.

The types of elements that comprise the language of interaction are clear to us all. Words, icons, colors, shapes, sounds, motion, gestures, and speech are the individual elements. But we also need to notice and consider how these elements are treated in relation to each other. Priority, hierarchy, position, layout, and repetition all generate meaning on their own and thus also become elements of interaction. All together, these items form a lexicon.

This is just the beginning. As tech products become more and more enmeshed into our daily lives, our interactions with technology will become commonplace. Maybe even standardized. Maybe some day we’ll be able to approach any piece of technology and immediately use it because the language embedded in it has become universal.

But language is organic. It’s always evolving from countless decisions made by people to use words, avoid others, and make new ones up. This is exactly what we do when we create, design, improve or craft an interface. We select icons that we know will work, avoid icons that won’t, and try new icons that we hope will stick. Same with labels. Same with colors. And we are beginning to do the same with gestures. We need to notice everything because everything is becoming interface. We need to really see and deconstruct all the everyday technology around us so that we understand the context in which people are learning how to use products.

We in the user experience field are creating the language of interaction on the fly when we make the products that people use and touch. We are curating the language of interaction by analyzing it and improving upon it. We (ideally) review our work with real people to see what makes sense and what doesn’t. We toss the bad and keep the good. We are collectively building the foundation for how people and technology will interact for the next several decades, and if we’re not too dumb, centuries.

Interaction design is an amazing field to be in right now, with opportunities and challenges we can’t even imagine yet. Let’s have fun with it, learn from each other, get involved in the community, and do mind-blowing work. Thank you.

So why would I do this? What compelled me to change the name of a blog that people surprisingly paid attention to? After all, switching is a branding nightmare. The “History of the Button” name is out there, just odd enough to throw people off guard and remember it. I see the danger. I’ve been around the tech block long enough to know that brand is a dangerous thing to toss aside.

But it felt like I painted myself into a corner. The hyperfocus of History of the Button was both boon and bane. The tight lens allowed for some really interesting exploration. However, I never felt as if I could veer away from it. I couldn’t comment on experience design in general, react to the writing of others, because it didn’t fall under the scope of History of the Button. It’s the name of a project, not a platform.

Of course, this is only my perception. If I wanted to comment on Andrew Hinton’s closing talk at the IA Summit, would anybody blink if it was published under the banner of History of the Button? I really doubt it, but it was still getting in my way. Time to rethink my mission here!

Welcome to Push. Click. Touch.

My goal here is to expand upon and evolve the focus of History of the Button, to think broader than how we got to where we are as a profession, but to also explore its context and think about its future. Interaction design and experience design in general are fascinating fields to work in right now, and will be for some time. I look forward to contributing to that.

I’ve also collected here writings from my previous blog Fluxion, which was active from 2001-2004. For the first time, all my writings are under one roof, which feels good.

Enjoy. Comment away. Let me know what you think, or if you spot any problems.

This was no question the best professional conference I have ever attended.

Seriously. The conference committee just simply nailed it, in their very first conference. And why? Because they designed a conference. They paid attention. They didn’t hold it in a hotel. Instead they chose Savannah College of Art and Design, a design school with a minor in interaction design. They actually served good food with a sense of presentation. They didn’t hand out a binder full of printed Powerpoints. They made people enjoy being there.

Being in Savannah in February with the temperature in the mid 70s was pretty good too.

But really, the content and speakers and presentations were awesome. Seeing Bill Buxton and Alan Cooper give their rally cries to interaction designers everywhere was incredibly inspiring. Seeing Malcolm McCullough calmly remind us to go outside and get some fresh air. Seeing Dan Saffer abandon the tech issues and just be himself. Seeing Dave Malouf get recognition for his incredible amount of work.

Despite all that, the highlights for me on these trips are simply the people who go. Yeah it’s a cliche, but it’s true. It’s simply an incredibly fun time to spend the weekend with smart people in my industry from all over the world. Makes you want to stay up late in the hotel bar and just talk.

Speaking of which, Friday night in the hotel bar, the unexpected happened. A woman is playing the bar piano, a song that Samantha and I recognized and knew, but couldn’t name. Afterwards, I went up to her and asked “can you tell me what that song was?” She replied, “I will not” with a sly grin. She then began playing it again, singing it softly, full eye contact the whole time. She emphasized the line “I’ll Stand by You.” Ah of course, the Pretenders. She finished, I thanked her. Two nights later I found out it was Roberta Flack. So yes, Roberta Flack was killing me softly, with her song. True story.

My presentation went well. I was happy with how it turned out. Here’s the video.

And then two hours after that, I was up on the big stage being announced as a new member of the IxDA Board of Directors. Very very honored and humbling experience. I really like all the board members so it’s going to be a fascinating and busy two years.

I know it’s early, but if you can, come attend Interaction09. Imagine what we can do with another year under our belt! They set a high bar to beat, but we’re up for the challenge. Where? TBD. When? TBD. Who’s speaking? TBD. Will it kick ass? Damn right.

In all, it was an overwhelming experience. I had some serious nervous energy going right beforehand, but thanks to Chris Baum for small talking me beyond it. The previous presenter ran a little late, I had things to plug in and papers to hand out, and the room was absolutely packed. But it all came together, and people seemed to really enjoy it, so yay!

(UPDATED: All the content is now hosted here at Push. Click. Touch.)

The lineup looks great, a lot of friends are attending, and the weather looks beautiful. All set for a wonderful weekend. And I’m proud to be speaking on Saturday.

If you’ll be at the event, please stop to say hello if you can. If you can’t attend, consider attending next year if you practice interaction design. This first year looks awesome. Just imagine what a second year will be like!

I’ll report back later…

In preparation for my talk at Interaction08 next week, I’ve been working on an article that states this idea. I will publish it then on this site, but for now, here’s the abstract.

As interaction designers during a time of rapid technological change, we are in the incredible position of collectively creating and curating a new language, the language of interaction. The building explosion of products with interfaces means that people have to continually adapt and learn new things. They will have to read each interface and look for clues, common visual elements that they’ve seen before. They’ll subconsciously look for a language that comprises words, sounds, colors, icons, motion, gestures, priorities, hierarchies and more. We are the custodians of this language, creating and curating it organically. We need to start seeing it everywhere and learn from each other as we define the future relationship between people and technology.

As I publish more on this, I’ll be interested to hear what you think about it.

Check out these lyrics from “Push de Button” from the Broadway musical “Jamaica,” by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. 1957. Sung by Lena Horne.

Push de button,
Up de elevator,
Push de button,
Out de orange juice.
Push de button,
From refrigerator
Come banana shortcake and frozen goose.

…Push de button,
Out come Pagliacci,
Push de button,
Also Liberace.
Push de button!
Wanna rock n’ roll?
Push de button!
Pay de toll?

Push de button, push de button!

What an isle! What an isle!
Squeeze de tube and get Pepsodent smile!
Crack de bank, rob de mail,
Turn de knob and get Muzak in jail!

Push de button,
Don’t be antiquated,
Get de baby
All pre-fabricated.
Push –
Apply de little finger
And push de button!

Now this isn’t very different from 1891’s You Press the Button, We Do the Rest. They are both songs about simultaneously marveling and lamenting the automation of daily life. But 66 years apart? Wouldn’t the button have been absorbed enough into the culture to not have to remark on it like this?

Then again, if I saw a Frozen Goose button, I’d remark on that.